Quotes
Quotes about History
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it "joy"?.
Once you are labeled 'the best' you want to stay up there, and you can't do it by loafing around. If I don't keep changing. I'm history.
Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being. -Ken Burns.
Blood alone moves the wheels of history.
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total ;of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mahomet, and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and schools combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke words of life such as never were spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of any orator or poet; without writing a single line, He has set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. Born in a manger, and crucified as a malefactor, He now controls the destinies of the civilized world, and rules a spiritual empire which embraces one-third of the inhabitants of the globe. There never was in this world a life so unpretending, modest, and lowly in its outward form and condition, and yet producing such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations, and classes of men. The annals of history produce no other example of such complete and astonishing success in spite of the absence of those material, social, literary, and artistic powers and influences which are indispensable to success for a mere man.
In the communities of the faithful, men had to impress upon themselves and upon others what Jesus said and did, for the more convinced they were that he was neither a Jewish pretender nor an unsubstantial deity like one of the deities of the cults, the more urgent it was for them to recall that his words were the rule of their life, and that his actions in history had created their position in the world; they had to think out their faith, to state it against outside criticism, and to teach it within their own circle, instead of being content with it as a mere emotion; they had also to refresh their courage by anticipating the future, which they believed was in the hands of their Lord. The common basis of their life was the conviction that they enjoyed a new relationship with God, for which they were indebted to Jesus. The technical term for this relationship was "covenant", and "covenant" became eventually in their vocabulary "testament". Hence the later name for these writings of the church, when gathered into a sacred collection, was "The New Testament"âNew because the older relationship of God to his people, which had obtained under Judaism, with its Old Testament was superseded by the faith and fellowship which Jesus Christ his Son had inaugurated. It was the consciousness of this that inspired the early Christians to live, and to write about the origin and applications of this new life. They wrote for their own age, without a thought of posterity, and they did not write in unison but in harmony.
This last section of Psalm 22 [i.e., verses 27-31] reminds us of Hebrews 12:2: "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." The "joy" that was set before Jesus was, we feel, knowing of the riches which would come to his brethren out of his death. In short, we are his joy, set before him when on the cross. As we have seen, only as the circle of the love of Jesus becomes world wide and as big as history will it be complete.
Feast of Matthias the Apostle If the ordinary canons of history, used in every other case, hold good in this case, Jesus is undoubtedly an historical person. If he is not an historical person, the only alternative is that there is no such thing as history at allâit is delirium, nothing else; and a rational being would be better employed in the collection of snuff-boxes. And if history is impossible, so is all other knowledge.
By giving to Jesus Christ, the Man who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, this historical personality, the name of Lord, the Saviour, we renounce all mysticism. For mysticism in the strict sense exists only where one soars above the sphere of history, and where in place of the Mediator and the historical event are put the inner word of God, the inner motions of the soul, in order to reach immediacy between soul and God, and, in the end, the identity of both. But while it is necessary to safeguard the Christian message of the Holy Spirit from the mystical misunderstanding by calling attention to its relation to Jesus Christ, it is necessary on the other hand to safeguard the message of Jesus Christ and His work from the orthodox and rationalist misunderstanding by emphasizing that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Spirit.
For the ancient philosopher and priest of esoteric cults, steeped in the tradition of Classical Greek, the grammatical forms in the Lord's Prayer would seem almost rude. One does not find the optative forms of polite petition so characteristic of elaborate requests made to earthly and heavenly potentates. Rather than employing such august forms, the Christians made their requests to God in what seem to be blunt imperatives. This does not mean that Christians lacked respect for their heavenly father, but it does mean that they were consistent with a new understanding of Him. In the tens of thousands of papyri fragments which have been rescued from the rubbish heaps of the ancient Greek world, one finds the imperative forms used constantly between members of a family. When the Christians addressed God as "Father," it was perfectly natural therefore for them to talk to Him as intimately as they would to their own father. Unfortunately, the history of our own English language has almost reversed this process. Originally, men used "thou" and "thee" in prayer because it was the appropriate familiar form of address; but now these words have become relegated to prayer alone.
I am unable to see how a man can find the hand of God in secular history unless he has first found an assurance of it in his personal experience.
Feast of Joseph of Nazareth Men today do not, perhaps, burn the Bible, nor does the Roman Catholic Church any longer put it on the Index, as it once did. But men destroy it in the form of exegesis: they destroy it in the way they deal with it. They destroy it by not reading it as written in normal, literary form, by ignoring its historical-grammatical exegesis, by changing the Bible's own perspective of itself as propositional revelation in space and time, in history.
A teacher appears--for whom no one was prepared, and whom no one could have expected. The argument from prophecy, on which the early apologists laid so much weight, was all ex post facto. No one beforehand could have conjectured a tenth of it. But without the background of Jewish prophet and psalmist, of Jewish national history, it would be hard to understand Jesus. If prophet and historian and legislator did not in type and enigma foretell in detail the story of his life, he was none the less their heir. None the less was he their heir in that he was not in bondage to his inheritance, but... a "minister not of the letter but of the spirit", and the whole of his activity lay "in newness of spirit". Without conjecturing what he might have been on another soil or of another stock--a type of guesswork always futile in history--we have to recognize the... immense spiritual wealth that lay ready to his hand.
One of the most striking parts of the Day of Atonement is that of the scapegoat. The high priest placed both his hands on the head of a goat and confessed all the sins of the nation. Then the goat carrying the sins of the people is sent off into the wilderness. But it is not just a piece of history! There is in the modern world a quest for scapegoats though with one enormous difference. Whenever there is an accident or a tragedy, there is a search for someone to blame. Often all the modern means of communication join in; accusations, resignations, demands for compensation and the rest. If a guilty person is found, then an orgy of condemnation and vilification. Rarely a sense of, there but for the grace of God go I. Instead of dealing gently with one another's failure because of our own vulnerability to criticism, there is the presumption that we are in a fit condition to judge and to condemn. The enormous difference? The original scapegoat followed a confession of the sins of the people. There was no blaming of someone else, but an admission of guilt and a quest for the forgiveness of God. The goat wasn't hated, but was a dramatic picture of the carrying away sins. It was the very opposite of a selfrighteous victimisation of someone else. Ever since 200 A.D., Christians have seen the scapegoat as a picture of Jesus. As it was led out to die in the wilderness bearing the sins of the people, so he was crucified outside Jerusalem for our sins. We are to be both forgiven and forgiving people.
Commemoration of Charles Williams, Spiritual Writer, 1945 Come to the Bible, not to study the history of God's divine action, but to be its object; not to learn what it has achieved throughout the centuries and still does, but simply to be the subject of its operation.
The Christian clearly understands that Jesus does not reveal all that is signified by the word "God", but only as much as could be revealed through a perfect human personality living in absolute obedience to God's will. The knowledge of God that men have by virtue of Jesus' revelation is quite enough for men to live by in this life, and to live gloriously and thankfully by, Christians maintainâthe knowledge that God the Creator, the Almighty and Eternal, the Lord of history, is man's Heavenly Father, and that love might well be, and indeed is, the ultimate meaning of human existence.
Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012 Faith knows nothing of external guaranteesâthat is, of course, faith as an original experience of the life of the Spirit. It is only in the secondary esoteric sphere of the religious life that we find guarantees and a general attempt to compel faith. To demand guarantees and proofs of faith is to fail to understand its very nature by denying the free, heroic act which it inspires. In really authentic and original religious experience, to the existence of which the history of the human spirit bears abundant witness, faith springs up without the aid of guarantees and compelling proofs, without any external coercion or the use of authority.
Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1944 In this age when it seems tacitly assumed that the Church is concerned only with another world than this, and in this world with nothing but individual conduct as bearing on prospects in that other world, hardly anyone reads the history of the Church in respect to its exercise of political influence. It is often assumed that the Church exercises little such influence and ought to exercise none; it is further assumed that this assumption is self-evident and has always been made by reasonable men. As a matter of fact the assumption is entirely modern and unjustified.
No history much? Perhaps. Only this ominous Dark beauty flowering under veils, Trapped in the spectrum of a dying style: A village like an instinct left to rust, Composed around the echo of a pistol-shot.
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.
From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.
